Underestimated
by WildNoa13474
Summary: Alternate title: The One Where Artemis Is More Of A Genius And As A Result Becomes A Normal Kid. 'Artemis Fowl wasn't an idiot. He knew he would have enemies. He also knew the best plan of attack is one of surprise. He acts accordingly. He prefers being underestimated to being dead.' In which Artemis is just a little bit smarter than canon, and that one IQ point changes everything.
1. Chapter 1

Artemis Fowl Senior looked at his newborn son with cold, calculating eyes. Big blue eyes stared back at him, unblinking. He didn't look like much, Mr. Fowl eventually decided.

Ignoring the expectant look of his beautiful wife and the stoïc expression of the Butler in the corner of the hospital room he got up and left, in his opinion already having wasted enough time on his future heir.

The latter who looked after him, an intelligent glint now in his eyes, and then turned back to his mother, in his young but active mind deciding he already wasted enough time on his supposed father.

* * *

"Hey mommy, look what I made!" A four-year-old Artemis Fowl called excitedly, holding up a drawing.

He carefully hid his disgust at the terrible slang words he was using and instead put a childishly proud expression on his face, acting like a normal child like he had been doing for the past five years. No matter how much he practiced, he could never really get used to his preciously preserved role... It just was not him, exactly.

He should get a diploma for his acting skills, he mused silently, definitely not for the first time, and not for the last time either.

* * *

"Mom, are we theeere yet?" Artemis, now seven years old, whined from the back seat of their expensive limo. He had settled into his role as much as he could, and liked to make himself believe that he even enjoyed it. He refused to accept the feeling of emptiness that came whenever his father ignored him again, or the feeling of guilt that welled up in him if his mother smiled down at him, just happy to have a normal child. Because he was Artemis Fowl the Second, and he did not do feelings. (he wondered why his father did not accept him, though, time and time again, on lonely nights, and tried to act more normal, maybe father would like him then)

"Artemis, you've asked that ten times in the last five minutes now." Butler said, trying to frown sternly but failing to hide the amused expression on his face. Artemis just sighed and slumped, against the window, like any ordinary child would do. He knew he had the advantage over any enemy that he might gain, and if he had displayed his actual intellect he would probably have been killed by now, but sometimes Artemis wondered if it was really worth all the lies.

* * *

Artemis Fowl, age ten, was rather pleased. He had just published a short (56207 words) post on psychology under the name Dr. F. Roy Dean Schlippe, a rather obvious but devious pseudonym if you asked Artemis(you won't, nobody does, after all), and had again managed to connect the writing to a NASA worker, who would undoubtedly be confused as to why his work computer said he uploaded a psychology lecture from a spaceship that wasn't even functional.

Artemis proceeded to walk downstairs, absent-mindedly flicking his eyes over the form of Butler reading a weapon magizine in the kitchen, and continued into the living room. He smiled in greeting, expecting his mother to be sitting on the couch reading a book, like she always was around this time. The smile faded away when he saw his mother on the phone, deathly pale. The book lay forgotten on the floor. His thoughts raced through his mind. Was someone sick?

No, who would have gotten sick to make his mom- as he had slowly gotten used to calling his mother that- look like that? Besides, mom didn't have the optimistic everyone-can-be-saved look in her eyes that she always got when another person was sick. Maybe something bad happened to someone she knew? No- the Fowls did not have many associates. The ones they did have were already in the house, with the exception of-

Father.

Artemis felt his heart turn to lead and quietly sat down on the couch. He strained his ears to try and understand what the person on the other side of the phone was saying, but he could only hear soft mumbling. He looked at his mother, terrified of what she was going to say. She looked back at Artemis with tears in her eyes.

She mumbled a few affirmatives into the phone and hung up. A part of Artemis' subconscious noticed her voice was shaking. She turned to him. "Artemis... Your father's ship..." She managed before she threw herself forward and hugged Artemis, sobbing and repeating "I'm so sorry." over and over again. Artemis was in shock. He refused to believe something bad happened to father. Because it was his _father_ , dammit, and even though they had never gotten along his father was still his father and wouldn't just leave his wife and child!

He heard the door open and saw Butler standing in the door opening, concern on his face but keeping quiet.

A rogue tear escaped from his eye.

* * *

"Artemis Fowl II, age twelve, normal mudboy. Average grades in school, rich family, comfy life, everything. Are you sure we're talking about the same kid?"

Root sighed in annoyance. "Yes Foaly, this is the mudboy who hacked into your system."

"Not possible."

"Well obviously your tech isn't as good as you thought it was."

"Hey! My technology is perfectly fine!"

"Tell that to the twelve-year-old."

Foaly sighed. Root was getting too much enjoyment from this.

"There are more things that don't fit, anyway. Why would he hack my files, but only look at the grades of... 'Luppy Wilkins, pixie, Lormoss School'?

Root's eyes narrowed. "I'll pay that pixie a visit."

In Fowl Manor Artemis watched the happenings through the security camera the centaur Foaly had so conveniently placed in the corner of his office, and smiled devilishly. He rather liked doing that, it made him feel devious. In this case, it was deserved. The centaur had no idea what files Artemis had actually accessed, or even that he had accessed them.

Everything was going to plan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Holy damn when did this story get so many favorites? I really... _underestimated_ this story's popularity.**

 **Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.**

The young heir to the Foul fortune scowled discreetly as he walked the familiar halls of 'Saint Bartleby's School for Young Gentlemen'.

Oh, how he hated this place. The arrogant children who thought themselves above the world, the patronizing teachers, the mind-numbingly boring lessons and _gymnastics._

Gym classes were what Artemis hated most of all. They were simply idiotic and counterproductive, as the teacher could not control the mass of sheep that was Artemis' class in the slightest. Their teacher's voice could not even top the cacophony of noise in the big space, and no 'lesson' went by without the puke worthy smell of sweat and stifling body heat.

The simplistic idiots of Artemis' class simply ran around yelling and wrestling the whole period while Artemis strategically stayed out of the way(read: hid in a fetal position in the corner).

Artemis shuddered slightly at the thought as he approached the lockers. Which brought him back to the reason behind his frown earlier. This morning he'd found a letter taped to his locker, saying to come to the music room after school hours.

Artemis was not very comfortable with the anonymous note almost certainly leading to a trap of some kind, however he had no choice but to comply, on the off chance the note-writer had something of crucial importance to tell him. A shame, too, as he has planned on using this afternoon to work out the exact details of his plan.

Of course, he would not proceed without many safeguards in place, and a solid verbal defense in case this note-writer would try to get information out of him.

Neatly packing his school supplies in his red and grey locker, he turned to the right and be began walking down the hallway, mentally preparing himself for the confrontation.

Cautiously, he approached the public music room, seeing the door already slightly ajar and hearing some sounds inside. How very ordinary, luring him in with curiosity.

There was no way around it. Artemis simply reinforced his clueless child look, and stepped inside seemingly without a care in the world.

In the music room was a group of five girls, who had been talking in soft tones among themselves until he had entered. Now they were all staring at him, for some strange inexplicable reason. Each of them was in one or multiple of Artemis' classes.

Artemis had to admit this was not expected, however didn't lower his guard. Women may look harmless, however Artemis knew Juliet fairly well and had been disillusioned of any prejudice about women's capabilities early on.

One girl stepped forward, and cleared her throat, looking anxious. The group of girls behind her giggled softly, looking expectant. What really confused Artemis was the light blush on the first girl's cheeks.

"Er, excuse me," he finally said when it was clear the girl wasn't going to speak up, despite the whispered encouragements from the rest of the group, "You're in my physics class, Allison, right?"

Artemis had never actually bothered to learn her name, but the rather loud whisper of "Go for it, Allison!" was hard to mistake.

The girl looked down to hide a brighter blush, and quickly nodded.

Artemis decided to ignore the strange giggling of excitement in the background, and focused on the girl, which he had determined to be a non-threat.

"So, you wanted to talk to me?"

Artemis was all of a sudden glad that he had long ago perfected acting casual in any given situation, as he was feeling increasingly out of place with the pack of girls in front of him.

"Y-Yeah.."

The girl was finally talking, still staring at the floor in what Artemis suspected was a state of thoughtfulness.

"I wanted t-to ask you..."

Artemis waited patiently for the girl to finish, but instead the girl turned completely red and fled back to her group of friends, leaving him staring confused at the spot where she'd been standing before. What on earth...?

Artemis looked to another girl when she spoke up. It was the short red haired girl who had loudly whispered that 'she could do it, Allison!'.

"Don't mind Allie," She said, smiling up at him. "She's just being shy. What she wanted to ask was, if you would go on a date with her."

 _Brain does not compute. Artemis.exe has stopped working._

"Uhh, what?"

Artemis' mind caught up to reality and innerly grimaced at the uneloquent phrase. To be fair, this had come as a completely unforseen situation. Artemis was simply baffled on what to do.

Artemis had just opened his mouth to form a response to whatever that was, preferably a bit more passable than the previous phrase, when Allison suddenly streaked past him and out the door, squeaking something that sounded like 'nevermind' on the way.

Well then.

Artemis turned to the red-haired girl for an explanation.

"She's had a crush on you since the beginning of the year." The girl began, before being interrupted by another. "You know, because of your whole 'tall dark and handsome loner' aura."

 _His what?_

"Excuse me?"

The girl blinked like she'd said something rather obvious.

"Well, the majority of girls in the school have a crush on you because of that, and some boys too, so it's not that weird."

"They... do?"

This was it. Artemis was completely baffled. He'd worked so hard to make himself seem average, in appearance as well as intelligence.

"Wow, really?" Another girl piped in, looking incredulous. "I thought even _you_ would've noticed a fanclub following you around!"

Alright, now Artemis was mildly insulted- hold up, a fanclub?

Seeing that Artemis was still staring into space uncomprehendingly, the red-haired girl rolled her eyes with a smile and went to find Allison with the other three, giving Artemis a jaunty little wave as she left the room.

Artemis brain was not used to dealing with emotional situations like this.

When he finally got home with a still slightly dazed, off-balanced look in his eyes, Juliet jokingly asked if he was getting sick, and Butler looked slightly worried. Artemis moved working out his masterplan to another day.

 **Oooh, I'm having way too much fun with this.**

 **This is such a filler chapter and I know it, but I mean, the excuse I'm using is that it shows Artemis dealing with normal problems, which wouldn't happen in the books I don't think.**

 **Okay, yes, there were OCs, but they're totally unimportant except for laughs and won't show up again. Promise. No promises about future OCs, though.**

 **But despite that, NO. THERE WIL NOT BE A MAIN CHARACTER OC. NOT EVER.**

 **For all you Americans out there, no, Irish education doesn't include middle school. After primary it's straight to high school for six years, just like my country actually. I researched it.** **About Ireland, not about my country. Obviously.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank** **you** ** _OnlyHere4Puckabrina_** **for pointing out a plot hole!** **Consider it fixed.**

Artemis went over the plan once more, searching for holes and missing details. There would never be such a thing as a perfect plan, of course, however Artemis could and would insure it had as little flaws as possible.

After his secret excursion to Tara the last full moon, led there by rumors and myths the local folk spread online, he had been able to infiltrate the People's network without much difficulty.

It was disgusting how easy it had been, actually. He simply had to walk into a late night bar a few miles away from Tara, which had had a happily drunken atmosphere and a lot of light and noise, join a few teenagers at a table and whisper covertly about 'amazing weird glitter floating in the sky' for a few minutes for two drunken teens to follow him to the clearing full of dancing, shielded fairies.

He had, his pride curling into a miserable ball at his actions, stumbled around pointing drunkenly at the sky shouting loudly about how he was right and glitter was shiny, until finally he had briefly hit something solid and soft in midair.

There had been panicked cursing- or well, it sounded like cursing- from seemingly nowhere and Artemis had looked on in hidden satisfaction as a shimmer became a form, and a clearly moondrunken fairy in a bright blue tutu approached, loudly reassuring the shimmers that he was an authority figure of some kind, he could handle this. Or something like that. Artemis couldn't exactly tell, as the fairy was speaking a language Artemis didn't recognize, but going by tone of voice and behavior patters of drunks, that was exactly what he'd said.

The two tagalongs had just looked on in a drunken daze as they were hypnotized. Artemis hadn't doubted that the other two thought they were hallucinating the whole thing.

The fairy finally stood in front of Artemis, who had simply stared back with the most idiotic gaping expression he could muster.

"You ffforget this too, alrigh'? And scram." The fairy had leaned in to Artemis' face and waved with large motions to somewhere behind Artemis.

Sloppy, unclear and weak, but it was effective nonetheless. Or it would have been, had Artemis not been wearing mirrored lenses.

He had not been sure they would work, of course, but in all the more realistic myths and stories about fairies using hypnosis, they looked straight into the target's eyes. It was simpel logic to assume the 'windows to the soul' were an essential part of the process.

Artemis had blankly turned and walked away from the clearing, mimicking the other two teens, and decidedly _not_ reacting to the fairy mass collectively relaxing in relief and going on with their get-together.

When he was several miles out and completely sure no fairy eyes were on him, Artemis had pulled out his highly upgraded mobile phone and stopped the process of scanning all nearby devices for code and network information.

The next step in the plan was one Artemis had taken already too. Infiltrate the People's network, lead the trail to a random fairy in wherever fairies lived(Haven or Atlantis, he now knew. And wasn't that interesting, the mythical sunken city was actually home to a fairy folk) and gain actual factual information about the People.

The language barrier had been expected, and the translator Artemis made was more than capable of its task.

Then there was the next step of the plan, which Artemis was waiting for right now. He was certain that, upon discovering a twelve year old had hacked their system, the People would send one of theirs to hypnotize- no, Mesmer him.

Artemis suspected that the only reason they had not tried already was because it was weekend and Artemis hadn't left the manor yet. The Rule of Dwelling was such a fickle thing.

Come Monday morning, Artemis had learned spoken and written Gnommish, finding to his surprise that the written characters corresponded to the Latin alphabet pronunciation-wise. For once, he almost felt like a typical teenager, the way he remained in bed simply out of unwillingness to go to school.

Alas, for the fairy to interrogate him, or kidnap and then interrogate him, he would have to venture out. Artemis could only hope the fairy got him before he arrived at school. His plans were on the move now, and Artemis didn't think he could spend another dull day at Bartleby's School for Young Gentlemen.

Even the name was inaccurate; the school had begun to allow female students a few decades ago but refused to change the name, as the latter was associated with a rather good reputation. In light of friday's happenings, which he refused to think to deeply about, Artemis wished it would've simply continued to refuse females.

Artemis was up and out the door early as always, only taking a moment to convince Butler that he had been walking to the school by himself every morning for nearly a year and no, he definitely didn't need the huge bodyguard to come along. They'd had this discussion every morning for that same nearly-a-year.

His heart was hammering, but Artemis k ept his face composed as he walked out the door. There were so many things that could go wrong here, and no matter how prepared Artemis was, there was always a possibility of failure.

He certainly did not squeak in surprise as he was pulled off of the empty street into an alley.


End file.
